Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Farmer In the Rye Brew Day!

I've been a long time reader of Ed Coffey's blog, Ales of the Riverwards. We often talk on FB of brewing as well as other topics like bread making and even the Tottenham Hotspurs. One of the posts he made back in 2014 was about his Saison, Farmer In the Rye. I loved the name and I also loved the look of the recipe. You can check out his posts on the brew here and here. The first of those advanced to the second round of NHC in 2013. Amos Browne from Browne and Bitter also won gold in two local Chicago competitions with the recipe. His notes can be found here. So it definitely seems like it would be a great recipe! I've decided to try my hand at it. I'll more than likely brew it a couple times close to each other so that I can have a batch clean and use a batch to Coupage with my older mature beer.

Although the recipe is listed on Ed's blog, I'll give a run down of what I'm brewing here.

(I'm going to start posting recipes like this so that that will be easier to scale to whatever size that anyone would like to brew them. Showing the percentages will make it easier than whatever amount I use.)

I'm using his recipe that Ed fermented with The Yeast Bay's Wallonian Farmhouse strain and using my favorite strain, Wyeast 3726 Farmhouse Ale. I don't have a fresh vial of Wallonian handy but I always have 3726 around. I may order some Wallonian to try again in some other projects.

I loved Ed's recipe because it really goes along the lines of what I like in a Saison recipe, simplicity. There is the Rye character malt and a bit of Munich but it really is left simple and there for the yeast to shine and the hops to balance it all out.

Went a little finer with the mill and my efficiency was much better!

I mashed in and hit 148F right on the money. You'll notice in Ed's post he has 90 minutes listed as the mash time. After talking with him, he did say that he mashes for 60 minutes. I ended up somewhere around 75 minutes and a pre-boil gravity of 1.038. The longer mash probably wouldn't do much but the main reason I went longer was that I had this happen.....

This actually started a bit earlier in the day. But the water department took a
a couple hours to get there. What started as a trickle became a river in my
side yard.

The day before brewing the water company had been out there because one of my neighbors noticed a small leak. Well throughout the brew day, it became the rushing river you see above. I knew that the water would be shut off so I tried to get through the brew day as fast as possible. I collected the wort in the kettle and set off on the boil.

got to love stainless shots!

Hop additions at the ready!

But, of course, the water was shut off just as I finished up the 75 min boil. With no water to run through my plate chiller, I had no way of cooling the beer. I recirculated for 20-30 minutes to get the wort as cool as I could and then pumped it into the FastFerment.

I've never done "no chill" brewing but when you don't have another option, experimentation can be used. I made sure my fermenter was very sanitized and I sealed the lid as soon as I had it filled. The next morning the temperature was around 78F. I then pitched the starter of 3726 I had decanted over night. Hopefully, my process was very sanitary and the healthy pitch of yeast should get to work quickly on the wort. You can read further on no chill brewing here and here. It's definitely a successful option for those who can't chill their beer or if you have a problem like I did on this brew day.

My starting gravity was a little lower than the target at 1.050. I believe I was a little short as I had more left in the kettle after the boil than my target post boil volume. I'm still dialing in my system so I'll get the kinks worked out. I have been adjusting the boil intensity lately and I may not have boiled as rigorous as I should have. I'm not overly concerned as I'll still have more beer to drink!

Sometimes uncontrollable events take place that will throw a wrench in your process. You just have to trudge through it. Dumping the batch wasn't what I wanted to do. I thought about leaving it open overnight to experiment with some spontaneous microbes but the temperature was a little too high (mid to high 50s) and I didn't want to chance that.

Aside from the water line bursting, it was a very easy brew day. I really like this recipe and hopefully my brew will turn out well. I already have plans to brew this again. Maybe I'll give the Wallonian strain a shot at it or go with some 565 to see if there is any variance. I'll have updates posted below and tasting notes here when I get to them!

Updates:

2-8-16: By 5:30PM full krausen was formed and it was bubbling away around 68F. I moved my small ceramic heater to get ready to increase the temperature to 75-78F where I like 3726 to move to when fermentation is well under way.

I kept the lid cracked for first couple days. Psuedo-open fermentation.

2-9-16: Turned on the heater as it was sitting at 72F that morning. By 5PM the temp was sitting at 76F.

1 comment:

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An Interview with Yvan de Baets of Brasserie De La Senne

Excerpt from the Interview of Yvan de Baets by The Beer Temple YouTube Channel

“People think you have to use those very yeasts (farmhouse or saison) for making Saison or farmhouse ales, but that’s not true. Imagine you are a farmer in the 19th century and of course you will use your yeast because it is always better. And when you get an infection which goes really too far, you take the yeast of the neighbor which is a totally different yeast, etc. Then you have dozens and dozens of Saison yeasts in the past. Depending on the way you want to make your Saison, I consider you could make Saison with easily a hundred different yeasts. That’s not a problem.”

Savoring the Saison Panel from GABF

A description of Saison by Belgian brewer Yvan de Baets of Brasserie de la Senne

“A saison must therefore be low in alcohol (in the modern — and Belgian — sense of the word in any case), around 4.5 to 6.5%. It must be highly attenuated (90 to 95% on average, if not more, as apparent attenuation) and dry. It must also be either sour or very bitter (with a bitterness obtained by the use of a massive amount of hops low in alpha acid). It shouldn’t in any case be smooth. If spices are used, it must be with the utmost moderation. A saison is not by any means a spice soup. Ideally, it should be fermented, at least partially, by wild yeasts as well as by cultured varieties. An authentic saison has a small 'wild' side, rustic, indefinable, far from the clean aspect of certain engineered beers of today. In one word, it must have extraordinary character.”